Monday, July 14, 2014

A third silent film shot in the
Birmingham area was Men of Steel,
filmed in Ensley and released on Sunday, July 11, 1926. An advertising tag line
used for the film was a modest one: “One of the Greatest Pictures ever
produced.” All the details of international distribution are unknown, but the
film did appear in Portugal in December 1927 and Finland in February 1928.
Running time for the film is given by various sources as 96 or 100 minutes.

The film
premiered in New York City at the Mark Strand Theatre on Broadway. Opened in
1914 with a capacity of 2,989 people, the Strand managed to survive as a cinema
in one form or another until it was demolished in early 1987. In its review the next day, the New York Times noted about the film that “all the
stupendous paraphernalia of a steel plant has been used, with the happy result
of making that fascinating industry vivid without sacrificing narrative in the
picture.”

This picture was a First National
production. The company had been founded in 1917 when 26 of the largest cinema
chains in the United States merged and created one chain of more than 600
theaters. Thomas L. Tally was the guiding force behind this effort, which was
intended to compete with dominate Paramount Pictures. First National would
produce, distribute and exhibit its own films.

Quickly the firm signed Mary Pickford and
Charlie Chaplin to the first million-dollar contracts in film history. In 1928
Warner Brothers bought a controlling interest in First National and continued
production under its banner until 1936. Among the almost 400 productions the
company released were such classics as So
Big (1924, based on Edna Ferber’s bestselling novel), The Lost World (1925, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle novel), and Little Caesar (1931, from W.R. Burnett’s
novel), one of the early gangster classics with Edward G. Robinson.

Movie herald for Men
of Steel. These two-sided pieces were included in film press kits and
copies were provided to individual theaters to hand them out on the
street, etc.

Source:
eBay Item #370760843105 accessed 3-12-13

Men of Steel was based on a short story,
“United States Flavor” written by Ralph G. Kirk and published in the Saturday Evening Post issue of June 14,
1924. Kirk was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1881 and died in 1960 in San
Diego, California. Between 1921 and 1953, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, he
published numerous short stories, most of them in the Post. In 1923 he published a book, Six Breeds, a collection of five dog stories, including two that
had been published in separate editions in 1917 and 1918. A 1922 film, The Scrapper, was based on his story
“Malloy Campeador.” Little else is known at the moment about Kirk, and I
haven’t seen the story yet and don’t know if it is set in Birmingham. Since
Kirk was from another steel producing state, the story may be set there. Why
Birmingham was chosen for a filming location is currently unknown.

Cover of a book by R.G. Kirk

Source: Amazon

The Film Daily, a trade newspaper that
covered the film and later television industries from 1915 until 1970, ran a
front page column-long review of Men of
Steel in its issue for Tuesday, July 13, 1926. “The picture has a punch
that reaches wallop proportions at several climaxes,” reviewer Kann gushed.
“’Men of Steel’ impresses,” he concludes. Unfortunately, the review makes no
mention of filming in Birmingham. The same issue of the paper also contains a
two-page advertisement for the film, crowing that “N.Y. Strand Busts Town Wide
Open with ‘Men of Steel.’” The ad also reproduces a telegram from the Strand’s
Joseph Plunkett who wrote breathlessly to executive Richard A. Rowland that “WE
HAD TO STOP SELLING TICKETS FOUR TIMES STOP AUDIENCE VERY ENTHUSIASTIC.”

I have not been able to locate an
image of the movie’s poster for use at theaters, but an article by Mark Caro
published in the Chicago Tribune on
March 13, 2012, gives us a few hints about its quality. Caro profiles Dwight
Cleveland, who has amassed a collection of more than 35,000 such posters.
Cleveland mentions “abrilliantly
colored poster touting Milton Sills in "Men of Steel" (1926) and
depicting one guy punching another in the face. To Cleveland, ‘Men
of Steel’ illustrates a key problem with his hobby. Although Sills and that
silent film are long forgotten, the poster is a beautiful stone lithograph that
the collector argues should be judged on its artistic merits. ‘That's a poster
that should sell for 10,000 bucks at some point, when people really understand
how important the artwork is,’ Cleveland said. ‘Then they'll realize this is a
great example of early lithography, and it will rise. Now if it's just going to
be valued by movie people,
they're not going to think it's so important.’"Men of Steel was directed
by George Archainbaud, an actor and manager who came to the U.S. from France in
1915. Before his death in 1959, he had worked primarily as a director in silent
and sound films and television. He is perhaps best remembered today for several
westerns, including some featuring Hopalong Cassidy. In 1932 he directed The Lost Squadron, in which three World
War I aviators find jobs as stunt flyers in Hollywood after the war.

The
male lead in Men of Steel was Milton
Sills, a popular star of the time; the movie was one of four he made in 1926
alone. Sills also wrote the script for the film based on Kirk’s short story. Born
in Chicago in 1882, he attended the University of Chicago and worked there
after graduation. In 1905 he joined a stock theater company and toured the
country before settling in New York and making his Broadway debut in 1908. By
1914 Sills had moved to Hollywood for his film debut in The Pit. By the time he arrived in Birmingham his success put him
in films of the largest studios and opposite such stars as Gloria Swanson and in such box-office hits as The Sea Hawk (1924). In 1927 Sills was among the 36 people who founded the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.

Milton
Sills [1882-1930]

Source: Wikipedia

Staring
opposite Sills was Dorothy Kenyon, a native of New York who was fifteen years
younger. She made her first film in 1915 and by 1924 appeared in Monsieur Beaucaire with Rudolph
Valentino. She continued to act in films well into the sound period and had a
few television appearances in the late 1950s. She died in 1979. Sills and Kenyon carried their relationship
beyond the set in Birmingham; they were married in October 1926 and had a son
before Sills' death from a heart attack in 1930.

Doris
Kenyon [1897-1979]

Source: Wikipedia

Other
individuals acting in the production included Victor McLaglen, May Allison and
Frank Currier. Born in England in 1886, McLaglen served in World War I after
several years on the boxing circuit. He even fought heavyweight champion Jack
Johnson in an exhibition match. McLaglen acted in several silent films in
Britain before moving to Hollywood where he quickly became a popular character
actor, often playing intoxicated Irishmen. He was still acting in films and
television until his death in 1959. His son Andrew McLaglen became a director
in both film and television.

Victor
McLaglen [1886-1959]

Source: Wikipedia

Georgia
native May Allison appeared on Broadway in 1914 but quickly moved to Hollywood.
She became very popular in a series of some 25 films with leading man Harold
Lockwood. However, his death in 1918 during the influenza pandemic resulted in
a decline in the public’s interest in her. Allison made her final film, The Telephone Girl, the year after Men of Steel and then retired. She died
in 1989.

May
Allison [1890-1989]
Source: Wikipedia

Born
in Connecticut in 1857, Frank Currier acted in more than 130 films between 1912
and 1928. He also directed a number of films during that period. He appeared in such silent classics as Ben-Hur and died in 1928.

A
synopsis of the film’s story by Hal Erickson can be found online at the
allmovie.com site. “Sills plays
Jan Bokak, a self-educated steelworker who finds himself in the middle of a
romantic triangle. Two different girls -- wealthy socialite Claire Pitt (May Allison) and blue-collar worker Mary Berwick (Doris Kenyon) --
simultaneously fall for Bokak. It later develops that Claire and Mary are
actually sisters, the first of a series of surprising plot twists leading to
Bokak being accused of a murder he didn't commit. In the gutsy climax, the
actual villain attempts to kill Bokak by pouring a vat of molten steel upon
him!”

According
to BhamWiki.com, Men of Steel premiered
at the Franklin Theatre in Ensley, although no date is given. Located at 1819
Avenue E, the theatre was built in the early 1900s and closed in the early
1930s. The building remains vacant today.

All
three of these silent films made in the Birmingham area—Moonshiner’s Daughter, Coming Through, and Men of Steel—are among the many “lost” films of the silent era.
Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation has estimated that 90 percent of films made
before 1929 are lost. These movies were made on nitrate film, which is highly
flammable and chemically unstable. Improperly stored, these films can turn to
toxic mush or powder in the canister. Sometimes "lost" silent films will surface in
various unexpected places. In 2010, the Russian state film archive gave the Library
of Congress copies of ten U.S. silent films believed lost but discovered in
storage.

Little
is known about the local details of making these three silent movies. Hopefully
some research in Birmingham area newspapers will uncover further information.

If
you would like to learn more about silent filmmaking, the print literature and
web resources are vast. My own interest was sparked years ago by Kevin
Brownlow’s book, The Parade’s Gone By [1976],
an excellent place to start.

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About Me

When not searching for the secret of the universe, I do research and writing on Alabama and/or medical history. I write poetry now and then. Spending time with my wife Dianne and children Amos and Becca is also important. And then there are the cats....